Since the last recession, it is usually argued that older workers are less affected by the economic downturn because their unemployment rate rose less than the one of prime-age workers. This view is a myth: older workers are more sensitive to the business cycle. We document volatilities of...

This paper presents a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence in favor of the view that the tax on continued activity not only decreases the participation rate by inducing early retirement, but also badly affects the employment rate of older workers just before early retirement age....

This paper develops a life-cycle approach to equilibrium unemployment. Workers only differ respectively to their distance from deterministic retirement. A non age-directed search equilibrium is then typically featured by increasing (decreasing) firing (hiring) rates with age and a hump-shaped...

This paper extends the job creation - job destruction approach to the labor market to take into account the life-cycle of workers. Forward looking decisions about hiring and firing depend on the time over which to recoup adjustment costs. The equilibrium is typically featured by increasing...

It is often argued that the tax on continued work should be removed by implementing actuarially fair schemes. However, these schemes cannot help fund the expected Social Security deficit. This paper proposes to give individuals only a fraction of the marginal actuarially fair incentives in case...

Phelps [Phelps, E. (1994): "Low-wage employment subsidies versus the welfare state", American Economic Review 84, 54-58.] presented the case for a low-wage subsidy policy. Since the mid-1990s, France has experimented with this strategy. This paper evaluates the effect of this policy on...

It is argued that the tax on continued activity should be removed by implementing actuarially fair schemes. However, these schemes cannot fund the expected Social Security (SS) deficit. This article proposes to give individuals a "fraction" of the actuarially fair incentives in the case of...

endogenous, provided the structural model is able to reproduce its volatility. Moreover, the matching model embeds other non-linearities, which alter the average job finding rate and consequently the business cycle cost.

At the end of working life, as well as reducing unemployment benefits, the unemployment-insurance agency could apply pension tax instead of wage tax. First, the pension tax provides greater incentives as the value of re-employment is tax-free. Second, the short job duration before retirement...